Without the help of Ayatollah, US is getting nowhere.
Bush has praised Ayatollah Sistani as a force for peace in Iraq. He wanted to shake his hand but Aytollah declined the offer. Ayatollahs never shake dirty American hands. Now Bush is desperate to for help from Ayatollah Ali al Sistani.
[b]After Talks With Bush, Maliki Visits Top Shiite Cleric to Discuss Plans [/b]The New York Times - September 6, 2007
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, under significant American pressure to break the stalemate in Iraq’s government, flew to the holy city of Najaf on Wednesday for talks with the country’s top Shiite cleric.
The meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who as Iraq’s most powerful religious leader influences millions of Iraqi Shiites, took place two days after Mr. Maliki met President Bush on an air base in western Iraq.
In Najaf, Mr. Maliki said Mr. Bush had “carried a message of support to the Iraqi government.”
Mr. Maliki last met with Ayatollah Sistani in October, during a disagreement with the prime minister’s American supporters over his progress in stabilizing the country, particularly in reining in militias. A delegation of senior government officials met with the ayatollah in December.
“I came here carrying a message of Iraq and the Iraqi government,” Mr. Maliki said after the meeting. “I raised before him my viewpoints to form a government of technocrats.”
Mr. Bush’s top officials in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, will deliver to Congress next week a broad assessment of American policy in Iraq, and a central focus will be the effectiveness of Mr. Maliki’s government.
Elsewhere in the country, bombs killed four United States soldiers, the American military said in a statement. Two died in eastern Baghdad, despite a call by the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr for Shiite militants to lay down their weapons. The other two were killed in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad.
Four soldiers were wounded in the blasts, the military said.
A bomb near a bus station in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Baladiyat killed four civilians and wounded more than a dozen, witnesses said. Accounts of the death toll varied, with The Associated Press reporting that 13 had been killed in the blast.
Mr. Maliki also spoke of the Shiite-on-Shiite violence that left scores dead last week during a Shiite religious festival in the southern city of Karbala, saying that no religious place should be protected by armed guards, but instead by the Iraqi Army at a distance. The fighting spread when rival Shiite militias fought each other near a holy shrine.
“This idea will avoid a lot of problems for us, and this is what I am going to discuss with local authorities in Najaf and in Karbala,” he said.
The American military said it had captured a “highly sought individual” whom it suspected of belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Soldiers captured the man in a raid before dawn in Karbala. The military said it suspected him of coordinating the transport of Iraqis into Iran for training in insurgency tactics and of aiding militants in Baghdad.
The soldiers also seized computers, communication devices, documents and photographs.
Mr. Maliki said again that he was considering replacing Sunni ministers who, in protest of what they say is the Maliki government’s sectarianism, walked out of his cabinet, contributing to the current political paralysis. But he said he was still working hard to bring them back into the fold.
“If they decide not to go back, then the posts can’t remain vacant,” he said, “and we will choose ministers according to the standards of competence.”
New U.N. Envoy to Iraq
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 5 — Staffan de Mistura, a veteran of many United Nations operations in the Middle East, was chosen Wednesday as the organization’s top envoy to Iraq, replacing Ashraf Qazi, who was assigned Tuesday to lead United Nations operations in southern Sudan.
Mr. de Mistura served under Mr. Qazi in 2005 and 2006 as the deputy United Nations representative in Iraq. Before that he spent four years in southern Lebanon as a personal representative of Kofi Annan, then the secretary general.
Mr. de Mistura, who is of Italian and Swedish descent, is now director of the United Nations Staff College in Turin, Italy.
Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting for this article, and an Iraqi employee for The New York Times in Najaf.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06iraq.html?ref=world
Voice of America is obviously a Satanic Radio Station.
